The public administrations of the Italian cities Todi and Terni are switching to LibreOffice, announces LibreUmbria. The regional project is assisting the Umbria region's public administrations to use this free software suite of office productivity tools.

This month, the city of Todi will complete its switch to LibreOffice, and the one in Terni will start, says Alfredo Parisi, founder of LibreUmbria and a researcher at the University of Perugia - one of the the project's members. The administration of Todi has 70 PCs, and Terni 50. LibreUmbria last year assisted the administration of the province of Perugia, using LibreOffice on all of its 1200 PCs and the Perugia Local Health Authority, which installed the office suite on 600 PCs.

Parisi introduced the LibreUmbria project at the LibreOffice conference, which took place in Bern, Switzerland, earlier this month. The project focusses on public administrations and schools, helping them to switch to and use LibreOffice. The centre also acts as a resource centre for SMEs and citizens. "We aim to train a large number of users, exchange tips and documentation, and create a vibrant community", said Parisi. "Which is why all of our documentation is shared using a creative commons licence."Award-winning

LibreUmbria is financed by the Umbria Region, supervised by the Open Source Competence Centre of the Umbria Region and the Consortium SIR Umbria- a regional government-owned ICT service centre.

LibreUmbria will now also start approaching the schools in the region, says Parisi, bolstered by a successful pilot. The organisation aims to train teachers, students and their parents, explaining them how to use LibreOffice, Ubuntu Linux and other free software solutions. "The same trainers that assisted Umbria's public administrations are volunteering in our approach to schools, and the school teachers are reaching out to their peers", says Parisi.

This 'waterfall' approach schools even won LibreUmbria the 'e-Gov 2014' prize, awarded last week. "It shows the enthusiasm around this project", says Parisi.